Rooms with a view

(Upstart) So I’m sitting in my local Cinema Googleplex watching “Traffic”—Benicio del Toro kicking butt in Mexico while the Douglas/Zeta-Joneses alternately fight and deal drugs on this side of the border. I’m not happy, and it’s not because Catherine Z-J gets her scenes shot in glorious California color while Benicio’s Mexico is seen through cheap yellow Walgreen’s sunglasses.

No, my problem is strictly off screen. The movie’s tagline (“No one gets away clean”) could be the mission statement at this theater. I’m sitting in a theater the approximate shape of two lanes of a bowling alley and with the aroma of a YMCA swimming pool. Because the place is narrow, though my wife and I arrived the regulation 15 minutes before the trailers we’re seated three rows from the screen, with our heads snapped back like we’re getting wisdom teeth pulled. Seeing the whole screen involves whipping my head left and right like we’re center court at Wimbledon, then mixing the two half-images somewhere in the recesses of our brain pans.

I’ll spare you the other details--the mouth-breather to my left, the extortionate $12 for two small sodas and a small popcorn and the same for parking—and just say that while I’ve always been a fan of seeing movies at the movies, I’m ready for another way to get my celluloid fix.

And Hollywood is ready with another option. Starting today, Miramax Films is testing a system that will let an audience download full-length movies over the Internet on a pay-per-view basis. Specially encrypted, the movies—or movie, at the moment—will cost $3.49 for a one-day rental; after 24 hours, the user’s license expires and the movie will not play, nor will it play if sent via e-mail to another viewer or saved to a storage device.

If it catches on, this could be a big improvement over my cable provider’s pay-per-view system, which has a truffle hound’s unerring instinct for finding movies I wouldn’t watch on a bet and putting them into heavy rotation—mixed with titles like “Silicone Alley” and “Royal Canadian Mounted.”

Someday, that is. Right now, all I can get from Miramax is “Guinevere”, a 1999 effort that stars Stephen Rea as a phtographer and Sarah Polley as the teenage rebel from an affluent home who falls in love with him. (“He was her first love…She was his last,” according to the Internet Movie Database.)

At last, an alternative to direct-to-video.

Seriously, I don’t mean to throw cold water on new ways to send me movies via copper. My wife and I have racked up enough Blockbuster late fees to qualify as Sumner Redstone’s silent partners. And I know the studio bigwigs are worried about loosing a file-sharing frenzy that will make Napster look as sedate as the Library of Congress reading room.

I also know this Miramax effort, and others to come, are simply toes testing the waters of online film distribution. Users need a high-speed connection, which effectively limits access to college students and other early adopters with no lives. This does not in itself rule me out.

But just as it’s not too early to test the business model, it’s not too early to point out its flaws. And that’s what I’m here for.

So let’s talk specifics, starting with quality. Miramax and its technical partner, SightSound.com, promise “near DVD” quality. Will that be as near to DVD as “near-VCR” quality is to that appliance? In other words, will I miss every other word? If so, thanks--I’ll spend the extra buck and rent the whole movie.

And when do my 24 hours with “Guinevere” begin? When I start the download? When I finish? When I open the file and begin to watch it? Who do I contact if the download stalls or fails? And who do I contact when that failed download still shows up on my credit card?

But the real problem is ambience. Guys, I don’t want to watch movies on my computer. My computer sucks for movie-watching. Not only is the screen about one-eighth the size of the appliance—Japan’s finest—that I have dedicated for that purpose, but the ambience is no improvement over the Googleplex. You make the call. I want to see a movie. Am I going to do so in (a) an office cluttered with old newspapers, full ashtrays and two fiber miles of computer cable, perched on a resale office chair that squeals like a nest of newborn woodchucks; or in (b) my living room, a well-appointed space I’ve already optimized for movie-watching with more than one bulb in the ceiling fixture, a full refrigerator and tidy bathroom only steps away, and a chair that years of viewing pleasure have crafted to fit my lower body like a friendly handshake?

I ask you, Mr. Movie Producer—which would you choose, woodchucks or handshake?

As John Goodman says in “Barton Fink” (“There’s only one thing stranger than what’s going on inside his head—what’s going on outside!”), “I can feel my butt getting’ sore already.”

I rest my case. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have two minutes to catch “Leprechaun 5: In the Hood” (“Evil is in the house”).

Editor-in-Chief Brian Quinton is working on a codec that will download not only Internet movies but a large Sprite and a box of Sno-Caps. Email him at brian_quinton@intertec.com.